Various automated services may be provided for individuals that are specialized for the particular preferences and situation of each individual. For example, an automated system may assist in making purchases for an individual such as automatically purchasing flowers each year on a birthday through an electronic transaction. As another example, an automated system may assist in setting up a dinner reservation for an individual through an electronic transaction. For these transactions, individual specific information must be known, such as the date and type of flowers to purchase or the time and place to schedule the reservation as well as the smoking preference.
Profile information for individuals may specify the preferences and factual scenarios such as birthdays of interest for an individual. This profile information may be accessed by automated systems when assisting with purchases, scheduling, etc. so that the individual is not required to provide this information for each task being performed. However, this profile information must be acquired from the individual before it can be put to use by the automated systems.
Acquiring such profile information can be a tedious task. An individual could be asked to complete a questionnaire. However, the information that is relevant to services to be provided for a particular individual at any given time may be difficult to anticipate such that a script of questions intended to elicit that information cannot be prepared in advance. Furthermore, the amount of information may be lengthy such that the individual is required to remain focused on answering numerous questions for an uncomfortable period. As a result the individual may become agitated and may provide hasty answers that are not useful to building the profile for the individual.